Life's a Draw 1 - Hello Everybody

This is the first issue of my artist's newsletter. Welcome aboard.

Dec 27, 2023

So, welcome and thank you, dear reader, for sharing your time with me reading these words of mine, which I sincerely appreciate.

This newsletter has been a long time coming. After trying my hand at some options that were either too complex or too lacking in features, I finally ended up using what most creatives doing newsletters use these days — Substack. What can I say, the guys have seemingly thought on every aspect of newsletter making and provide the most robust, user- and creator-friendly and overall best platform currently available for these tasks. So without further ado, let’s get on with it.

Yes that's me. Okay, more like cartoon me. At left, Daniel is being his usual self while Susana looks on. — Yes, that’s me. Okay, more like cartoony me. At left, Daniel —my dearest mascot character for 30+ years and surrogate paper son for all purposes— is being his usual self while Susana, his friend and as of yet platonic idée fixe, looks on.

Who am I?

Let’s start with the basics: I am a Costa Rican artist and information technology professional who has just crossed the half-century life milestone. This said, I’d rather be called “vintage” than “old fart” for the moment, if you please.

I hold a BFA degree on arts and design by the University of Costa Rica, from where I graduated in 2001. However, much of my professional career was made on information technology as a web developer and designer for many companies and employers. I had the tech chops, money was good and easy, and when I realized it twenty years had just passed by. I recall very well when at my first office job on the late 90s while finishing my college studies, I thought of it as a “temp hustle” to earn some money; one, two years of this hustle at most, and I’d be back to what I considered my true calling — animation, the classic Disney kind. Well, silly me.

In between, the Pixar movie Toy Story came up breaking new ground on 3D animation, rendering most classic animators obsolete and jobless almost immediately. Evidently, I had made the best choice in hindsight, career-wise. Or had I?

While I never was one of those wunderkinder creating artsy masterpieces before succeeding at potty training, once I got a knack for drawing I knew I wanted to do cartoons. On a notebook sadly lost to the sands of time, I wrote the adventures of two kid friends named Raúl and Arthur, which were basically a pastiche of all the adventure books I used to read when I was a school kid. It’s no wonder, then, than even though I wasn’t fully conscious at the time, something I always yearned to do was to tell stories through pictures — ergo, comics or animation. And given that unlike the latter, the former could be easily executed by a “team of one” which suits my normal reclusive nature when it comes to create art. And that’s part of the topics I will be sharing here with you over time, as I’m now taking in a more serious approach to original middle grade comics and stories.

But enough about me for now. Let’s see some art!

From the Doodle Board

While Christmas is already behind us, I felt it would be nice to share the timelapse process of my holiday card for 2023, which for some reason always seems to gravitate towards tamales (a Costa Rican Christmas comfort food staple; we make a small batch every year). While I’m still learning the ropes of proper video editing and publishing, you can see the entire timelapse video on my Tiktok channel (also: pay attention to the animated characters at the beginning — I’m starting using a short, animated branded intro on my videos)

Over the years I’ve created a series of personal characters with which I’ve long wanted to build and tell stories that ring with me. If you follow me here, you will learn about them little by little over time (and many, many other things).

2023 Christmas Card featuring my characters Susana as a Santa’s elf and Daniel as a young, mischevious Santa holding a tamal, while Rudolph attempts to sneak in a tasty bite.

Noteworthy Finds

NHK World, the Japanese TV channel that is akin to England’s BBC or Deutsche Welle in Germany, features a stunning Anime/Manga Spotlight series of documentaries giving a premium inside look to the life and work of great anime and manga artists, including of course the best-selling names of Hayao Miyazaki and Osamu Tezuka. One of my favorite episodes though is this one featuring Wataru Watanabe, artist of the manga series Yowamushi Pedal — where we see the artist working on real time with dazzling technique and speed, not unlike the bicycle races he draws… and performs, as a competitive cyclist himself. He embodies the perfect balance of keeping not just being creative, but also healthy while at it — AND using his sports practice as material for his manga stories.

And that’s it for this first newsletter episode of Life’s A Draw. I humbly ask you to spread the word and recommend this newsletter to people interested on illustration, middle grade comics and creative life topics. See you on the next one!

— Alberto